Housekeeping

Today, with fall in the air, I decided it was the perfect day to get a some housekeeping in. Now before you feel to bad for me, I have to confess, I don't meaing cleaning!! And I did get out and enjoy the beautiful day we had here. I walked up town this morning, got a few errands done and visited a couple of my favorite consignment stores. I even came home with some bargains. At one store I found a single 50g skein of some older Fortissima cream colored sock weight yarn for $.50. Of course I bought it to add to my sock stash. Maybe I can experiment with dyeing and use it for the heels and toes on a future pair.

I returned home to a quiet house... the perfect opportunity to knit right? Wrong!!
First I frogged a WIP, the cable scarf that was driving me insane. I was using Bernat Alpaca Natural Blends, (acrylic and alpaca). It sheds horribly. Everytime I worked on that scarf I ended up looking like I'd sheared the animal myself and had to wrestle it to the ground in the process. The 2 unused skeins are going back to AC Moore and I'd like to say I tossed the remainng skein but I didn't. I sat and wound a center pull ball out of it just so I could cover my pants one more time with the tiny white guard hairs.

That started me on an organizing mission. I found myself picking through my meager stash. It's pretty pathetic, mostly acrylic, bought from the craft stores when I first started knitting again. It's sounds awful, but now that I've slowly been buying more of my yarn at LYS and using more wool and natural fibers I can feel the difference.

I sorted it into a couple of piles. I had a nice collection of little yarns balls in various colors. Let's be real... I'm never going to use this yarn. Recently my friend, Knitting Novice http://www.stringandstitches.blogspot.com/ told me that her son's preschool collects yarn scraps for arts & crafts projects. So I filled a bag for him to take to school.

Then I piled up the yarn that was useable for small projects. I had a few full skeins and some partial skeins. Again, I'm probably not going to use this yarn anytime soon. So I'm going to donate it to Interim House, here in Philly. I heard about it on Brenda Dayne's podcast. It's residential drug & alcohol treatment facilty for women. As part of the recovery process they learn to knit and crochet and are always in need of yarn and needles.

http://mcduf.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html

Apparently, these ladies are really into felting and all I have is acrylic. So I feel a little bad. And I just went on about how I'm using less and less acrylic, like it's not good enough for me. But after thinking on it, I realized it's not bad yarn, it's just beginner yarn. It's what I bought when I was first getting back into knitting and it's what most beginners buy. And it's not that I won't ever buy acrylic again but I need to start fresh. So I'm going to pack this up, along with the large assortment of straight knitting needles I have and don't use and send them off. And if I have the opportunity to pick up some wool on sale I send some of that along.

What I have left is small, but it's my stash, some of it acrylic, some of it wool, some the dreaded alpaca. But I'm ready to accept the challenge and continue to enhance it. I better get busy, I risk being laughed off Ravelry if I post it there.




And my sock stash